IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 7 ENGLISH | Seite 132

ally recognized rights. According to Professor Martha Prieto Valdés, of the University of Havana’s Law School, the
Court of Constitutional Guarantees progressively lost the power given to it by
the Constitution until it openly declared,
in a pronouncement in May 1967, that
“constitutional articles are declared and
pronounced as programmatic”2 and concluded that the constitutional precepts
are not weakened through the exercise of
ordinary laws. Since the Constitution, as
a ruling document in the judicial nature
of legal processes, was relegated, the
power of the Constitutional and Social
Guarantees Hall ended up significantly
limiting itself. The change from Court to
Hall had already taken place in the early
sixties. According to the professor, those
were the years in which Soviet legal
texts permeated the teaching of Law in
Cuba, and they derailed this field’s
sense. One of the consequences of that
intervention was the suppression of the
Hall of Constitutional and Social Guarantees on May 25th, 1973. Cuban jurists
have spent decades clamoring about the
need to reactivate of a Court of Constitutional Guarantees to which everyone
from judges to ordinary citizens could
resort, when the law’s hegemony was
threatened, as was the case before. According to Prieto Valdés, one of the reasons for getting rid of the Hall of Constitutional and Social Guarantees was the
role played by this organ during the coup
d’état that took out Fulgencio Batista, in
March 1952: “A weighty argument in
this decision was the criticism proffered
against the Court of Guarantees, in 1952,

because it justified the overthrow of Batista. Its conduct was labeled as treasonous, vile, cowardly and repugnant, and
since then considered a useless institution regarding its power to guarantee the
popular will.”3 The logic of appealing to
an event to discredit the pertinence of an
institution, and not only keep other institutions from taking over its responsibilities, but just letting them cease existing,
has been essential in Castroism’s political practice. Carlos Rafael Rodríguez’s
argument for justifying the delay in the
Revolution’s institutionalization, and the
Law School professor’s description, both
respond strictly to only one procedure.
Social consequences of institutional
abandonment
At this time, the disconnect between the
individual and traditional institutions
filled those spaces created by the revolutionary system, like mass organizations,
the Cuban Communist Party, public plazas during the days of Fidel Alejandro
Castro’s speeches, and places used for
all sorts of mobilization (mostly agricultural work and military training). Yet, if
in the beginning those people who went
to those spaces could change fields, the
organizational practices and commitment they brought with them from their
recently dissolved cohort limited their
ability to keep individuals with similar
purposes together, and derive from those
groups efficient disciplinary and training
systems, and commitment. This resulted
from the insufficiencies of these created
institution that increased over time. Any
individual linked to the Cuban economy
saw that it was in irreversible decline, no
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